For Texas, a painful ending in national title game

A painful endingLonghorns had opportunities even after loss of McCoy

Published 6:30 am, Friday, January 8, 2010

Texas quarterback Garrett Gilbert looks up from the turf after throwing an interception during the fourth quarter.

Texas quarterback Garrett Gilbert looks up from the turf after throwing an interception during the fourth quarter.

Photo: Smiley N. Pool, Chronicle

For Texas, a painful ending in national title game

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PASADENA, CALIF. — The Texas Longhorns will remember Thursday night's Bowl Championship Series title game for Garrett Gilbert's guts, Colt McCoy's inspiration and the fleeting hope that even in the worst of times, all things are possible.

But they are left, in the end, with this sinking reality: With the national title on the line and quarterback McCoy lost to a first-quarter shoulder injury, Alabama's Crimson Tide were too tough and too good for coach Mack Brown's Longhorns.

Minus McCoy, Texas' offense was ineffective for much of the game until a final flurry, and the Longhorns were beaten 37-21 by the Crimson Tide at the Rose Bowl before 94,906 for college football's national championship.

It was a return to glory for the Tide, who won their first national title since 1992 and their eighth since World War II, and a bitter disappointment for the Longhorns, whose hopes for a second title in this decade were undone by McCoy's injury and timely plays by Alabama's experienced, tenacious defense.

“I love this game. I have a passion for this game,” McCoy said afterward. “I've done everything I can to contribute to my team. We made it this far, and it was unfortunate that I didn't get to play. I would have given everything I had to be out there.”

Of his untimely injury, he said, “I have no pain in my arm. I just can't feel my arm.”

And of the impact that Thursday's disappointment will have on his life, he said, “I've never questioned why things happen as they do. God is in control of my life, and I know, if nothing else, I'm standing on the rock.”

Even without their record-breaking leader, the Longhorns did not go quietly. After trailing 24-6 at halftime, Texas rallied within three points in the fourth quarter on two touchdown passes by Gilbert, a freshman who had thrown only 26 passes this season before being pressed into service.

McCoy returned to the sidelines and offered encouragement to his understudy, who threw scoring passes of 44 and 28 yards to McCoy's roommate and best friend, Jordan Shipley. The Longhorns' defense, meanwhile, shackled the Tide for most of the second half as Texas crept back into contention.

But Gilbert also threw a first-half interception that resulted in an Alabama touchdown. His fumble in the final minutes led to the clinching TD for Alabama, a 1-yard scoring run by Heisman Trophy winner Mark Ingram, and a late interception resulted in a final Alabama score.

No perfect ending

Thanks to the injury to McCoy, who was on the field for only five plays, Texas was as snakebit on this night as it was touched by fate in January 2005, when it beat Michigan on a field goal at the Rose Bowl as time expired, and in January 2006, when Houston's Vince Young led the Longhorns to the national championship over heavily favored Southern California.

In Texas' perfect scenario, Thursday's game would have been a repeat of the 2006 Rose Bowl in which Young, runner-up to USC's Reggie Bush for the Heisman, willed the Longhorns to a 41-38 win over the Trojans in arguably the greatest college football game of the last 50 years and almost certainly the supreme moment in Texas gridiron history.

This time, the game plan called for McCoy, Texas' award-winning scholar-athlete, small-town son of a high school coach and Heisman runner-up to Oklahoma's Sam Bradford in 2008, to turn individual disappointment into collective triumph.

Those dreams evaporated almost immediately when confronted with the reality of Alabama, unbeaten champion of the Southeastern Conference, which arrived with a solid, workmanlike offense and a defense that had wrecked mental dismay and physical anguish on opponents all season.

The Tide struck first, and hardest, in the opening minutes of the game when defensive end Marcel Dareus hit McCoy from behind at the Alabama 11-yard line. McCoy, the NCAA record-holder for wins by a starting quarterback, ran off the field, his right arm dangling by his side, and did not return.

Texas took a 6-0 lead with two field goals after two Alabama turnovers in the first quarter, and the Longhorns' defense battered Tide quarterback Greg McElroy, a product of Southlake Carroll's storied program in suburban Dallas-Fort Worth, into ineffectiveness.

But with the Tide's aerial game grounded, Alabama had the horses in Ingram, who ran for 116 yards on 22 carries and two touchdowns, and freshman Trent Richardson, who bolted for a 49-yard score, to pull away from the Longhorns.

Tide rises on defense

Alabama's defense did its part, too, when Dareus scored in the final minute of the second quarter on a 28-yard interception return for a 24-6 halftime edge.

Just as Thursday's game in the Arroyo Seco represented a return to past glories for the Longhorns, it represented a touchstone for Alabama as well. The Tide on New Year's Day 1926 was the first Southern team to play in the Rose Bowl, and its 20-19 win over Washington was the first of four trips out west during the 1920s and '30s.

Alabama's program reached its greatest heights under Paul “Bear” Bryant in the 1960s and '70s with five national championships, but the Tide had lapsed into inconsistency since, save for a 1992 national title under Bryant's pupil, Gene Stallings.

The Tide began the decade in Pasadena with a 35-24 loss to UCLA and then lapsed into a period of NCAA probation, inconsistent coaching and mediocrity before bringing in Nick Saban as head coach in 2007.

Three seasons later, the Tide are back on top, and Saban's statue will now go up alongside those of Bryant, Stallings and Alabama's other great coaches outside Bryant-Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa.

“I'm so happy for our entire team, our fans, who have been great since I've been at Alabama, the players and the things they did to buy into what we had to do,” Saban said. “I'm really proud for the state of Alabama, and this means a lot to them.”

Horns finish 13-1

As for Texas, it finishes the season at 13-1, continuing a run of double-digit win totals under coach Mack Brown, and another offseason of wondering what might have been had McCoy remained in the game.